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Queen Elizabeth (lost at Hong Kong)

October 4th, 2009, 18:06

Queen Elizabeth (lost at Hong Kong)

Followed up from the old board, the story and musings of Queen Elizabeth ( old thread ).

Saw the old James Bond movie "The man with the golden gun" at the hospital last night.... even though I have seen this series so many times before, I was surprised to see the shots of and from Queen Elizabeth in Hong Kong....

Mr. Bond even entered the old Queen at her resting place, clearly after the fire, and met up with his superiors at a place on board which looked like the swimming pool... I know some of those shots, maybe even all of them, were in a studio, but the exterior shots must have been real... or not?

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I think that Queen Elizabeth would have not gone on for much longer, I get a conspiracy feeling everytime I think of Cunard selling the two queens so rapidly and for next to nothing.
Something has never ever sat right for me on this!

Infamy, Infamy.... They've got it in for me! Said The Laughing Assassin.

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Thats funny Captain, I watched the very same movie a few weeks ago wanting to see the scenes with the ship. FYI, the hull of the ship is still in the harbor but is lost forever as an airport was built over it. The ship was indeed sabotaged as multiple fires broke out at the same time. These are words of the Captain, who was the Cunard captain who last served under the British flag and later served with CY Tung. I think he came out of retirement too, as well as many members of the crew in both Deck and Engineering departments.

There are two sets of letters, one on the west coast, and there was another on the east coast in CY Tung offices in NYC. But they seem to have disappeared.

It was this tragic fire, as well as that of the Normandie and Morro Castle which made William Francis Gibbs so prominent about fire prevention (and no flammable materials like wood) aboard his SS United States.

There is a gentleman writing a book about this ship with plans for it to come out soon. Thanks for sharing the pics.

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I did see the QE1 at anchor in Victoria Harbour before she burnt.
She always had a lot of barges and boats around her as she was being converted to her new role at the anchorage. I don't know if she had been into drydock for underwater work, or if that was planned for after her completion, as I don't think the drydock at Wampoa Shipyard was big enough to accommodate such a large vessel.

I was not in HK at the time of the fire, but did see the wreck many times. Still in the same place as she had been anchored earlier.
I don't believe there is anything left on the bottom at that spot, and it is definitely not in way of the new Chek Lap Kok Airport, which is situated on mostly reclaimed land at the north side of Lantau Island.

If any of the hull was used in the reclamation work for the airport, it must have been moved there, since she sunk in Victoria harbour, which is approx.20 km. "as the crows fly" from there.
Here is a picture which shows the QE1 at anchor withStonecutter Island and Beacon Hill, Kowloon visible in the background:

And two pics of the wreck from different angles:
This one shows Green Island and Lantau Island in the background.

An this one has a large power station in the background.

Problem with pinpointing the location is that EVERYTHING has changed in HK. Whole "mountains" have been flattened to get stone for reclamation and to build water reservoir.

Here is an approx. position, from memory and from the above pics:

Another interesting fact is that not so long before the fire in the Seawise University, another "white elephant" project, the "Jumbo Floating Seafood Restaurant" also burnt while nearing completion.
This one was moored at a small shipyard in Aberdeen Harbour and "fires started simultaneously in several places", just like on the S.U.
Has later been completed and still active in Aberdeen:

A lot of conspiracy theories has been put forward in both cases, incl. insurance fraud, which is not likely since this was pet projects for two very rich HK individuals. Communist Unions has also been accused, as both projects went ahead without their members been involved. Both Owners were known Nationalist sympathisers.

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Fantastic video Paul, very rare to find such old films with an original sound track. She sure did make a lovely sound, and it was great to hear all of the smaller steam whistles from the other craft around.

Interesting post Ombugge, so her final resting place is not under an airport, that is interesting, i wonder if anything remains of her today? I was watching a documentary a couple of weeks ago about Brunels 'S.S Great Eastern', she was finally broken up on a beach along the River Mersey in 1889. In the TV program the presenter went to the beach to look to see if he could find anything of her. After scraping around in the mud at low water, he soon found bits of her laying just under the mud, massive plates with perfectly round rivet holes. The plates were far to big for him to lift, so they still sit there today. I just found it interesting to think back to when the massive ship was beached there over a century ago, all that history, and to think parts of her still lay there to this day.

Your charts, your radar, your eyes and ears - if all 4 agree, you may proceed with caution.

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